Chapter Text
Gon's tired, heavy-lidded eyes followed the maze-like trails etched into the pine panelled ceiling above his bed until he finally figured out what it was he'd been looking at.
He'd heard about insects with mandibles strong enough to chew straight through the bark of a tree, but he'd never seen the intricate carvings left behind from the inside.
He tried picturing the insects as they would have once travelled through their tunnel systems in the tree, but try as he might, he just didn't find the subject of wood-boring beetles all that interesting.
To Gon, it had felt like a lifetime since the clock on the wall had sung its melodic tune as the hands passed twelve and two, but he wasn't any closer to sleep now than he was back then.
He'd already gotten out of bed once before to wander the Zoldyck owned cabin in search of something to sate his boredom; but being that the cabin was only ever used for respite on the rare occasion a family member was in the area on a job—the seldom use being reason for the boys' stay after leaving Heaven's Arena—there wasn't much in the way of entertainment.
So after unsurprisingly finding nothing of interest apart from a dusty stack of books he knew he wouldn't understand, Gon trudged back to his room where he now laid thinking about the monotonous lifecycle of beetles.
Aside from occasions he and Killua had made exciting plans, or on the day before their birthdays, sleepless nights like the one he suffered now were not at all normal for him. And having been kept busy with rigorous training over the last few months, he was usually out the second his head hit the pillow.
But tonight, though his body had been run completely ragged from the boys' usual routine, his mind refused to shut off.
With a disgruntled sigh, Gon rolled over and pulled his blanket up over his head as he forced his eyes shut. His last idea had been in vain, so if he really wasn't going to get any rest, he'd at least pass the time by thinking about something more interesting than bugs.
As the reason the boys had taken up short-term residence in the cabin was to wait for the next ship headed back to Whale Island, Aunt Mito was the first to come to Gon's mind. Then, after imagining his best friend's reaction to the home he couldn't wait to share with him, he thought of his other friends, Kurapika and Leorio, and wondered if they, too, had passed the 'secret' Hunter exam. And then of course, as they always did, his thoughts naturally fell to Ging.
Where was he?
What was he doing?
What would happen when he finally found him?
Gon let his imagination run wild as it made up extravagant stories and epic tales of his father's theoretical adventures, until at long last, with a smile lingering on his lips, he finally began to drift.
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Dreams of wood-eating arthropods had only just begun to materialize when Gon was suddenly startled awake by a shout.
Forced upright by a rush of adrenaline that wrenched his heart into his throat, he immediately scanned the darkness around him. Then, as nothing seemed out of the ordinary, he closed his eyes and turned a sharp ear to the door.
For a long while, all Gon could hear was the sound of his own pulse outpacing the ticking of the clock, and soon figured he must have simply dreamt the noise. However, the moment he'd finally calmed enough to rest his head back down against the pillow, a clear, definitive cry rang out from the direction of Killua's bedroom.
Without another thought, Gon threw his covers off to the side and stumbled out of his room into the darkened hall. Then, as he stepped in through the opened bedroom door, he lurched to a halt.
Killua laid fast asleep, still tucked beneath the covers just as he'd been before when Gon had passed by his room only hours earlier.
He took a moment to listen again, as he was certain the sound had come from Killua's room, but when the deafening silence of the cabin had him once again questioning his consciousness, he pinched himself just to be sure.
Now on edge—and a little sore—he slowly crept through the dark toward his sleeping friend's side. As he inched closer and could now see the rapid rise and fall of his chest through the moonlight from the window, he knew he'd been right to investigate.
With brows set deep in a furrow, Killua clutched his bedsheets with a white-knuckled grip that wore his nails straight through the thick fabric.
Gon put a hand to his shoulder as he called his name, but quickly recoiled as the horrible sound of Killua's clenching jaw had him worried he might pulverize his own teeth.
Trying to think fast, his next attempt would be to pull the boy's blanket from his body, but he immediately abandoned the idea when he noticed the cold sweat slicked across his skin and moved to shut the window so he wouldn't catch a cold.
"Hey, Killua," he called again, returning to his trembling friend's side.
When the boy still had yet to respond, Gon began to panic. It wasn't at all like Killua to sleep so soundly, and he'd never seen him so distressed in all the time that he'd known him.
Something was wrong.
Now in a frenzy, he yelled the boy's name and tried everything short of full-blown battery in his last-ditch effort to jostle him awake.
As Gon's final, urgent cry bounced back off of the bedroom walls, Killua startled with a gasp as his eyes finally shot open.
"...Gon?" he panted, blinking hard while his vision adjusted.
"Yeah, it's me," he said with a sigh of relief, "Are you okay? I think you were having a nightmare."
As Killua slowly sat himself upright, his eyes darted back and fourth through the darkness of the room.
"Hey, it's alright now." Gon assured him, rubbing gentle circles into his back the same way his Aunt had done for him when he was young.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited until Killua's trembling slowly began to settle as he found his bearings.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Killua finally replied, his voice calm as he ran a hand through his disheveled bed-head. "Don't worry about me, you can go back to sleep now."
Killua then attempted a reassuring smile that might've been convincing if it had been for anyone other than Gon.
"Are you gonna go back to sleep?"
Killua's gaze dropped to the hands wringing nervously in his lap. "Probably not," he admitted with a sigh, embarrassed by his obvious transparency. He knew better than to try to lie to the boy who knew him better than he did himself.
Gon sighed and gazed off in thought for a long while, until so abruptly it startled his drowsily yawning friend, he jumped up to his feet.
"Then I won't either!" he decided, raising a declarative pointer finger an inch from his friend's now bewildered face. "Let's go out and get an early start on today's training!"
Killua looked to the boy whose bright, beaming eyes lit up even in the midst of darkness and felt all of his lingering fear melt away in an instant. Despite it all, he was glad to know the contagious positivity of his one and only friend was something he could always count on.
Flashing a grin, he took the hand outstretched before him and quickly scrambled to his feet as Gon pulled him up out of bed.
Immediately re-energized with excitement, the two best friends faced one another with delighted smiles and shifted into opposing fighting stances.
"Osu!" they chanted in unison.
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By the time the boys had finally tired themselves out enough to even consider going back to bed, soft tendrils of dawn's warm light had begun peeking up over the treetops.
For a long while, the pair laid silently side-by-side in an overgrown glade a few kilometres from the cabin as they took a break to rest and catch their breath.
With his hands tucked behind his head, Gon gazed up through the space between the trees as wispy pink and yellow clouds drifted leisurely across the open sky.
In accompany to the choir of birds, the fresh, earthy scent of the morning dew roused a nostalgic longing in the pit of the boy's stomach as it reminded him of home.
"Hey, Killua," Gon mumbled, sleepily stretching the fatigue from his limbs. "I wonder if Ging's out there somewhere watching the sunrise, too."
Gon smiled to himself, already picturing the scene in his mind:
There's Ging, wiping the sweat from his brow with a contented sigh as he finally stands atop the ridge of a formidable mountainside.
He settles down to rest a while in the mouth of a shallow cavern before eventually setting off again in pursuit of a mythical creature whose last reported sighting was from ancient record. And while he sits, greeting the familiar morning sunrise from the top of the world, a smile spreads across his face.
Maybe he's thinking of me, too, Gon thought.
The unyieldingly optimistic boy had gotten so lost in his own daydream, it hadn't even occurred he never heard Killua reply. When he finally tore his gaze from the sky to look over at his friend, he was immediately overcome with contentment.
A gentle breeze tousled Killua's unruly white hair as he snored in the long billowing grass, all of his tension and fear having finally drifted away.
Gon, unable to hide the smile from his face, took a moment to watch his sleeping best friend before settling back into the grass for a short nap of his own.
If Gon had known this would be their last real moment of rest for the many days to come, he would've let Killua sleep at least a little while longer before he woke him up again for more training.